Sarah Court by Craig Davidson Page B

burden?”
    “I had no choice with you, pet. And was glad not
to. But.” Spoken with finality. “But.”
    Take the hospital elevator to the pediatric ward.
The evening shift nurse—body garrulous in heft but
her face having none of it—eyes me in my military
surplus parka. REYNOLDS stamped in black on the
breast pocket.
    “A fine thing, what you did,” she says, after I
identify myself. “Lucky you were there.”
    The compliment comes off backhanded: as if my
managing to rescue the baby was as unbelievable as
my having landed a harrier jump-jet on a cocktail
napkin. The nurse glides past darkened delivery
rooms on soft-soled shoes silent as a razor blade
through a bowl of water. A mesh-inlaid mirror runs
the length of the nursery. Inside I am struck by the
smell of new life.
    We’re all rotting. Your body hits a peak at
eighteen, maybe, and that perfect bodily zenith lasts
how long? A day, or a few hours of that day? Next,
descent and decay. Strains and aches and dimming
sight. Stuff yourself with carcinogens because you’ve
surrendered to the inevitability of collapse. You get
winded climbing a flight of stairs. Following that,
lumps and lesions to ice your heart. The Big C? Hold
the whole tortured works together another fifty
years and you’re granted the merciful stillness of the
grave.
    But the nursery is stuffed full of showroommodel humans. Brand-spanking new, factory-fresh
rolled off the assembly line. Impregnated with that
new-baby smell. Assaulted by pound upon pound of
sprightly, helpless baby-meat, I fleetingly wish I was
some breed of vampire. A youth vampire. Flap round
the nursery on talcum-powdered wings poking my
head into hermetically-sanitized tubs to hoover
the youthful essence out of these helpless things.
Partake of their luscious and nourishing, sinfully yummy esprit. Drain these beautiful babes until I
was a child again and my organs no longer on the rot,
cherubic as I dash away shed of my too-big clothes.
I’d flee barefoot from a nursery full of withered
crepe-paper baby husks.
    “So small,” I say, peering at my little toilet baby.
“Was she . . .”
    “A preemie?” The nurse shakes her head. “Only
malnourished. Think of a plant under a porch: it’ll
grow down there in the dark and damp. Just not so
well.”
    “May I have some time alone?”
    “Make it quiet time. If one wakes, they all wake.”
    The baby’s name card affixed to the tub: JANE
DOE #2. I section her sleeping face in search of the
woman who’d tried to murder her. But that woman
exists in my memory only as a tangle of emotional
drives. Her face is my own face. The face of everyone
I’ve even known. She made a premeditated choice to
dump this life in a retail chain toilet. Abdicate her
responsibilities in such vicious fashion. How had she
seen her life changing? Your own defenseless child—
how deep must you core into any heart to find that
mammoth well of expedience?
    Unbutton my coat. Cradled in stirrups of my own
creation—oversize suspenders accommodating a
cardboard papoose—is a doll I’d stolen from a toy
store.
    Teddy , another of Mama Russell’s boys, set fire
to my father’s workshop and burnt to death in our
basement. Dad was mailing a package. I was in my
bedroom with Abigail Burger, Fletcher Burger’s
daughter.
    Teddy was a pygmy pyromaniac with burn scars
on his arms pink as pulled taffy. He wore boxy black
glasses with melted armatures. He’d soak ant hills
in lighter fluid and set them ablaze. He said things
like: “My penis is two and a third inches long” or
“Anacondas have one twelve-foot-long lung” or “My
mama had a nerve disorder. And Poppa is a sailor.”
He was known to eat his elbow and knee scabs. Cut
holes in his trouser pockets so he could squeeze his
testicles. Mama had Teddy wear linen gloves so he
wouldn’t break the skin as he throttled them. He
shimmied through our basement window while
Abigail and I